Emily Elizabeth Constance Jones

First published Fri Mar 25, 2011

Emily Elizabeth Constance Jones (1848–1922), a contemporary of
Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore at Cambridge University, worked
primarily in philosophical logic and ethics. Her most significant
contribution to the former area is her application of the
intension-extension distinction to singular terms, anticipating
Frege's related distinction between sense and reference and
Russell's pre-“On Denoting” distinction between
meaning and denotation. Widely regarded as an authority on
philosophical logic by figures as diverse as F. C. S. Schiller and G.
F. Stout on the one hand and C. S. Peirce on the other, Jones appeared
in published symposia alongside such eminent contemporaries as W. E.
Johnson and Bernard Bosanquet and became, in 1896, the first woman to
present a paper at the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club. Jones was
sufficiently esteemed by Peirce for him to cite her Elements of
Logic as a Science of Propositions as an authoritative source on
the “Material Fallacy” in Baldwin's widely-read
reference work, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology.
Her major publication, A New Law of Thought and its Logical
Bearings, published in 1911 by Cambridge University Press,
contained an enthusiastic preface by Stout and was received
favorably in Mind, where the reviewer, Schiller,
remarked: “Miss Jones has made a great discovery.”
In the same year, Russell delivered a paper to the
Moral Sciences Club, subsequently published as “Knowledge by
Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description”, responding to a
critical paper by Jones, delivered to the same society some months
earlier. Jones also published in ethics, and was regarded
by Henry Sidgwick, her mentor, as one of his prize students. Yet,
despite the fact that she published numerous articles, a monograph and
several textbooks (some going into multiple editions), and was a very
visible member of the English philosophical community from the
1890s until her death in 1922, she is now almost entirely
forgotten.

This entry will focus on Jones's contribution to
philosophical logic—in particular, her law of significant
assertion—and her criticisms of Russell.

Born in Wales in 1848, Emily Elizabeth Constance Jones matriculated
at Girton College, Cambridge University's newly established
women's college, in 1875. She studied for the Moral
Sciences Tripos under Henry Sidgwick, James Ward and John Neville
Keynes, receiving a “First Class”, Sidgwick being among her
examiners. (Her brothers' education took priority over her
own, delaying her entry into the academy and occasioning subsequent
interruptions.) It was due to the interventions of Sidgwick and
Ward that Jones, fluent from childhood in both German and French, was
offered to complete, upon graduation, the remaining half of a
translation of Hermann Lotze's massive Mikrocosmos, left
unfinished by Elizabeth Hamilton (the recently deceased daughter of Sir
William Hamilton). Jones later went on to become Sidgwick's
literary executor. Her research in philosophical logic dates from
1884, when she began her career at Girton College as Resident Lecturer
in Moral Sciences and was called upon to teach courses in logic; she
later became Vice-Mistress and, subsequently, Mistress of Girton.
During this period, Jones wrote a number of introductory logic texts,
some of which went through several printings. By 1890, in her
Elements of Logic as a Science of Propositions, whose main
philosophical themes are summarized in the “The Import of
Categorical Propositions” (Jones 1893a), she developed her
“law of significant assertion”—the “new law of
thought” which would become the focus of her subsequent work in
philosophical logic, culminating in the eponymously-titled monograph,
published by Cambridge University Press in 1911. Jones was also a
capable administrator. When she became Mistress of Girton in
1903, the college was £43,000 in debt; at the time of her
retirement in 1916, the debt had been paid off and funds had been
raised to finance several fellowships. Her death in 1922 was
marked by the appearance of substantial obituaries in both
Mind and the Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society.

In her autobiography, Jones wrote of an early fascination with
issues related to the nature and structure of content:

This unsettled question—what is asserted when you make a
statement, and what is the proper form of statement?—had deeply
interested me from the time when I was a student and puzzled over
Mill's and Jevons' accounts of propositions. (Jones 1922,
71)

Part of what fascinated her concerned (what I'll call) the
paradox of predication—a paradox that Jones traced to
Plato's Sophist. To understand Jones's main
contributions to philosophical logic, it is useful to review Hermann
Lotze's influential discussion, well known to Jones, of this
paradox:

This absolute connection of two concepts
S and P, in which the one is unconditionally the
other, and yet both stand over against each other as different, is a
relation quite impracticable in thought; by means of this copula, the
simple ‘is’ of the categorical judgment, two different
contents cannot be connected at all; they must either fall entirely
within one another, or they must remain entirely separate, and the
impossible judgment, ‘S is P’, resolves
itself into three others, ‘S is S’,
‘P is P’, ‘S is not
P.’ (Lotze 1888, 79)

To predicate P of S is either to say of S
what it is not, or it is to say of S what it is. That
is, it is to say that S is not S (because it is
P), or it is to say that it is S. We either get
a contradiction—we say, in effect, that S is not
S—or an instance of the law of identity—we say
that S is S. Neither option is
satisfactory.

For Lotze, assertion takes essentially two forms: identity sentences
and their negations. This renders him incapable of making
sense of (what Jones called) significant assertion. Either one
asserts a triviality (A is A) or an absurdity
(A is not A). (He vaguely hints at a pragmatic
account of such assertion, remarking that, perhaps, “what we
mean by them will eventually justify itself.”) As
we shall see, Jones does not depart from Lotze's austere
conception of logical form: an affirmative proposition S is P
states an identity, and is true just in case the extension of
S = the extension of P. However, she is able to
graft a notion of intensional content onto Lotze's logical
skeleton, thus avoiding his paradoxical conclusion, that, despite
appearances, all positive assertion is analyzed in terms of A
is not A.

The debate surrounding this paradox was not marginal, but at the
center of contemporary discussion. Although Jones's own solution
falls squarely within the framework of nineteenth century logic, she
seems to be responding to worries that were shared by Russell and
Moore. Indeed, Dreben and Floyd (1991), who provide a useful discussion
of the historical context, argue that the paradox is implicated in
Russell and Moore's break with idealism.

The distinction between the intension (or connotation) and extension
(or denotation) of names was widely acknowledged by nineteenth century
logicians. But the distinction was applied, as a rule, to
general names, not proper names. With regard to
proper names, logicians generally sided with John Stuart Mill in
holding that they lack connotation. Keynes, for example, writes
that proper names are “non-connotative”—that is,
“their application is not determined by a conventionally assigned
set of attributes” (Keynes 1906, 42).

Jones's “New Law of Thought”—the law of
significant assertion—incorporates the distinction as
follows.

The Law of Significant Assertion:
Any Subject of Predication is an identity of denotation in diversity
of intension. (Jones 1910–11: 169; 1911, 2)

The general idea is quite straightforward, especially to anyone
familiar with Frege's sense-reference distinction (or
Russell's pre-“On Denoting” distinction between
meaning and denotation), even if the formulation is slightly clumsy:
when we predicate a property of an individual or collection x,
we first identify x via an intension f and then
assert its identity with an individual or collection y, where
y is itself identified via a distinct intension
g. We thus combine “identity of denotation”
or “denotational oneness” with “diversity of
intension”. As she puts it as early as 1893, “the
very essence of Categorical statements… is the reference (in
affirmatives) of two terms to one object, in such a way as to indicate
that the object (or group) pointed out by the one term has also the
characteristics signified by the other…” (1893a,
219). Or, as Stout writes in his Preface to Jones (1911),
“every affirmative proposition asserts, and every negative
proposition denies, the union of different attributes within the unity
of the same thing” (Stout 1911, v).

As noted, Jones's conception of logical form is austere: every positive
proposition asserts an identity. Accordingly, she takes the terms
of all F is G to be the quantifier phrase all F and the
predicate G. (“I understand the terms to
include the whole of any proposition except the copula”
(1893–94, 36).) This departs from the then-standard view, which
distinguishes, in addition to the copula, subject term (F),
predicate term (G) and quantifier or “term
indicator” (all). The term indicator, she notes,
is optional, citing ‘Cicero is Tully’ as a case of an
identity proposition in which it is absent (1890, 5).

There are thus only two forms that can properly be referred to as
logical forms for Jones—identities and their
negations. While Jones holds that S is P asserts an
“identity of denotation” in “diversity of
intension”, Sis not P asserts
“difference of denotation” in “intensional
diversity”.

Generalizing the intension-extension distinction to proper names
solves a problem that must be faced by anyone espousing the view that
predication is, at root, identity. If we construe assertively
uttering a sentence exemplifying ‘S is P’
as asserting the proposition that A is A,
then we fail to capture the point of the assertion. The assertion
appears significant and informative; yet the content is
trifling—something about which we hardly need to be
informed. If we take the general form of assertion to be an
informative identity—to be “an identity of denotation in
diversity of intension”—then the problem is
solved.

It is worth remarking, however, that Jones's label “a
new law of thought” is somewhat misleading. In the
nineteenth century, the laws of thought were commonly understood to be:
the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, and the law of
excluded middle. She does not state a new law, in addition to
these three; nor is it clear how the new “law” can supplant
the law of identity. What then is the status of her law,
vis-à-vis the other laws? The following passage
provides some help:

If we genuinely accept A is A as the expression of
a fundamental and primary logical principle, the difficulty is, how
theoretically to get beyond it. If we reject it, what we need,
and what we find, to put in its place, is a principle of significant
assertion of the form S is P. The laws of
contradiction and excluded middle are laws of the relations of
assertions, and they cannot be expressed in satisfactory and
unambiguous form without the use of S is P,
S is not P, propositions. So even for them we
require a prior principle, explaining and justifying the S is
P proposition itself. Such a logical principle, based on
a new analysis of S is P, I think I can provide.
(1911, 10–11)

Jones's worry seems to be that the law of identity is a poor
model for ordinary assertions, which, unlike A is A,
are significant and informative. Moreover, the remaining
laws—the laws of non-contradiction and excluded
middle—apply more generally than to identity assertions; thus
they cannot be expressed in their full generality without invoking
assertions of the form S is P and S is
not P. (That is, the law of excluded middle cannot be
expressed as: either A is A or A is not
A; similarly, mutatis mutandis, for the law of
non-contradiction.)

Still, although Jones advocates rejecting the law of identity in
favor of S is P, it's not clear
what she means by this. For one thing, not every instance of S
is P is true. Moreover, it would seem that Jones must
presuppose the law of identity in any case: after all, a predication is
true, on her view, only if its terms co-refer—only if, that is,
it involves the assertion of an identity. Without the law of
identity, what would ground the truth of such a predication?

Although the concept of intension plays an important role in
Jones's theory, she recognizes that grasping the intension of a
name is neither necessary nor sufficient for grasping its
extension. One may grasp the intension of a term and not grasp
its extension, or conversely, grasp its extension but not its
intension. Although undeveloped, her observations here are
remarkably prescient.

Concerning the possibility that grasping an expression's
extension does not require grasping its intension, she writes:

I know that metal in extension denotes gold, silver,
copper, iron, lead, tin, mercury, aluminium, etc., and I know these
when I see them, but I am not able to give a satisfactory statement of
the intension which they have in common…

Or again I know, or I may know, all the inhabitants of a country
parish and be able to greet them correctly by name when I meet them,
but may be entirely unable to give a recognizable description of any of
them. Or I may know real diamonds from paste, or one disease from
another, and always apply the names rightly, and yet be unable to set
out even to myself the connotation or intension. (1911, 13)

The point applies to the intensions of proper names as well as
natural kind terms. What these considerations suggest, as similar
considerations later suggested to Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam, is
that names and natural kind terms do not pick out their referents
descriptively: mastery of either proper names or natural kind terms
does not require that we associate with them any reference-determining
description. Jones, however, doesn't draw this bold
conclusion. In fact, she thinks the observation is harmless,
since, on her view, the intension of a term can be
reconstructed by reflecting on its extension.

What I insist on is that all the names we use have both extension
and intension; and either of these may be a guide to the other. I
may have the things to which a name applies put before me (extensive
definition) and from examination of them reach the intension; or have
intension given, and go out and by means of it determine extension.
(1911, 14)

It doesn't appear, however, that Jones is committing herself
to any strong thesis here—that, contra Frege, there is a
“backward road” from referent to sense; only that, in
practice, a term's intension can often be gleaned from
examination of its extension.

In addition, grasping a term's intension does not guarantee
being able to identify its extension:

On the other hand I may have full descriptive knowledge of a person
or plant or precious stone, and yet not be able to recognize the person
or plant or jewel though it may much concern me to do so. I may even
know much more about a person than his ordinary acquaintances, or even
than his dearest friend, and be able to give a much more accurate
description of his appearance and manner, and yet not know him when I
meet him. (1911, 13–4)

To connect this observation with the previous, we must assume that
the competent use of N, where N is a name or natural
kind term, involves a capacity to recognize N's
referent. What this passage then shows is that this recognitional
capacity is not grounded in our grasping any reference-securing
description or intension. But then grasping a name's
intension does not, by itself, put one in a position to use it to
refer.

Of course, the points are, as indicated, undeveloped, and the above interpretation,
written in the light of later discussions by Kripke, Putnam and Gareth
Evans, may put more weight on Jones's remarks than they can
plausibly bear. But the passage's placement early on in the
monograph reflects an awareness of its significance. (The passage
does, of course, fail to register the thought that her observations
could undermine a key aspect of her proposal—that names and
natural kind terms have intensions, or sense.)

As we have seen, Jones holds that all affirmative propositions are
identities. Applying the analysis can be less than
straightforward, however. Consider her analysis of (1):

(1)

This small fragrant wild flower
is Clematis.

On her view, ‘this small fragrant wild flower’ and
‘Clematis’ have the same extension, yet they possess
distinct intensions (Jones 1893–94, 36). Jones doesn't
fully work out the details of this proposal, but the idea seems to be
that the extension of the subject term is identical to some
Clematis—a subset of the things in the extension of
‘Clematis’.

As can be seen, the analysis assumes that predicate terms are
implicitly quantified. Jones held, following Sir William
Hamilton, that quantification is not restricted to subject terms, but
applies to predicate terms as well (although the quantifier attaching
to the predicate is never articulated). Hamilton's doctrine
of the quantification of the predicate allowed for all sorts of
monstrosities (Kneale and Kneale, 1962, 352–4). However, the only
cases that Jones discusses involve quantifying the predicate with
‘some’, and assigning truth conditions to ‘Q
+ S are some P’ is relatively
straightforward:

All S is some P

|S- P*| = 0

where P* ⊆
P

Some S is some P

|S* ∩
P*| > 0

where
S* ⊆ S
and P* ⊆
P

In each case, we get the same truth conditions we would have with a
quantifier-free predicate. E.g., ‘All S is some
P’ is true just in case all S are
P.

The endorsement of Hamilton's view might seem
perverse—and, in fact, Jones is critical of his view in her logic
primer (1906, 35–6)—but it is necessary if Jones is to retain the
view that significant assertion is, at root, the assertion of an
identity. After all, if all humans are mortal asserts an
identity, then, given that identity is commutative, it entails the
apparently nonsensical mortals are all humans. The
result is at least intelligible if we suppose that the predicate is
also quantified—if, that is, all humans are mortal is
just all humans are some mortals. For then, the
consequence would be some mortals are all humans, which is
just the claim that some subset of the set of mortals is identical to
the set of (all) humans. (This, of course, is not quite an
identity statement, since one of the terms is quantified, but it is the
closest we can get to a workable version of Jones's
proposal.)

The analysis is applied to a variety of statement forms (see 1911,
48–53). One cannot escape the impression, however, that
Jones, like the Oxbridge logicians generally, “dissected with
some crude instruments” (Grattan-Guinness 1985-86). Still,
while the Law of Significant Assertion cannot be true in its full
generality—it is implausible for many of the sentence forms she
considers and fails to apply to numerous forms she fails to
consider—a restriction of the law to identity sentences is worth
considering. Accordingly, in discussing Jones in relation to
Frege and Russell, I will construe The Law of Significant Assertion as
a doctrine concerning identity sentences—sentences of the form
a is b (where a and b are names,
demonstratives or descriptions and is functions accordingly as
the is of identity, not predication)—and not as a claim
about subject-predicate sentences generally.

Jones's analysis of identity sentences has obvious affinities
with similar analyses advanced by Frege and the early Russell. In light
of this, it is instructive to review how Frege and Russell argue for
their respective analyses and compare their arguments with
Jones's own.

In the opening paragraph of “On Sense and Reference”
(Frege 1892), Frege argues that a theory that identifies the semantic
value of a name with its referent—the naïve
theory—cannot differentiate between the contents of
‘Hesperus = Hesperus’ and ‘Hesperus =
Phosphorus’. Given the plausible assumption that the proposition
expressed by a sentence is a function of the semantic values of its
constituent expressions together with their mode of combination, it
seems inevitable that what the latter sentence says is just what the
former sentence says—assuming, with the naïve theory, that
‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ possess the same
semantic value. Of course, the latter sentence is potentially
informative, whereas the former sentence is not. This leads Frege to
reject the naïve theory. He also rejects, for reasons that need
not detain us, a view according to which identity is a relation
between the names ‘Hesperus’ and
‘Phosphorus’. The view he settles on is that the
contribution that ‘Hesperus’ makes to the propositions
expressed by the above-quoted identity sentences is a sense
—a way of thinking of the referent. (While one might say
that the semantic value of ‘Hesperus’ is the
associated sense, this would be incorrect, since, on Frege's view,
‘Hesperus’ has two semantic values—its sense, and
the referent determined by this sense. The proposition expressed by,
e.g., ‘Hesperus = Phosphorus’ is partly determined by this
sense, whereas the referent of this sentence—for Frege, its
truth-value—is partly determined by the associated
referent.)

Jones's argument is similar, but not identical, to
Frege's. She argues that a theory that assimilates all
assertion to A is A must fail to account for cases of
significant assertion—cases in which we go beyond “pure
tautology”. Frege's argument is more sophisticated,
making implicit appeal to a principle of compositionality, and
considering alternative theories of the semantic contents of singular
terms. Still, both are concerned to correct a
similar—perhaps the same—mistake. Indeed,
Jones's and Frege's interest in identity may derive from a
common source, namely Lotze. A number of writers have suggested
that Frege's remarks on the metaphysics of content were
influenced by Lotze and have argued that they should be read in light
of that influence (see Gabriel, 2002 for discussion and
references). While their focus has been on ontological rather
than purely semantic themes, it is not out of the question that
Lotze's influence on Frege extended to semantic questions as
well.

Russell's analysis of identity sentences in
Principles §64 falls out of his theory of denoting
concepts—concepts that, like intensions, determine an
extension. In this section Russell shows how the theory of
denoting concepts can explain “why it is ever worthwhile to
affirm identity”:

But the question arises: Why is it ever worth while to affirm
identity? The question is answered by the theory of denoting. If
we say “Edward VII is the King,” we assert an identity; the
reason why this assertion is worth making is, that in the one case the
actual term occurs, while in the other a denoting concept takes its
place… Often two denoting concepts occur, and the term itself is
not mentioned, as in the proposition “the present Pope is the last
survivor of his generation.” When a term is given, the assertion of an
identity with itself, though true, is perfectly futile, and is never
made outside the logic-books; but where denoting concepts are
introduced, identity is at once seen to be significant. In this case,
of course, there is involved, though not asserted, a relation of the
denoting concept to the terms, or of the two denoting concepts to each
other. But the is which occurs in such propositions does not
itself state this further relation, but states pure identity. (Russell
1903; note omitted)

This bears a striking similarity to Jones's proposal.
When an identity statement relates two “terms”, or
individuals, it is trivial and “is never made outside the
logic-books”; but when at least one denoting concept is involved,
the statement is significant. While these cases
“involve” a relation of co-reference between the denoting
concepts, or between one denoting concept and the term denoted, this
relation is not part of what is stated: the one relation stated remains
“pure identity”. Thus, even in the case of an
identity statement involving a denoting concept, we nonetheless assert
an identity involving the individual determined by the denoting
concept.

In “The Existential Import of Propositions” (Russell
1905a), the theory of denoting concepts is applied to the problem of
vacuous singular terms. Russell explains how the failure of a
singular term to denote is compatible with the term's nonetheless
having meaning, if we assume that denoting phrases (such as ‘the
present King of France’) and at least certain names
(‘Apollo’) express denoting concepts. Jones seems not
to have considered the application of her denotation-connotation
distinction to the problem of vacuous terms and does not appeal to its
utility in this connection in arguing for her proposal.

As we have seen, Jones's and Russell's respective analyses
of identity statements are similar and, moreover, similarly
motivated. This raises a question: did Russell, prior to their public
exchange (discussed below), have any awareness of Jones's work?
Complete ignorance on Russell's part seems unlikely, considering
that her teacher, Ward, and her champion, Stout, were Russell's
teachers at Cambridge.[1]
It seems
plausible that they would have attempted to interest Russell in the
work of someone whose concerns overlapped with his so
significantly. Moreover, Russell was a regular reader of the
journals to which Jones contributed; in several cases, the two appeared
in the same issue of Mind or of the Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society. (In fact, Jones's contribution
to The Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society for 1906–07,
which occurs in the same issue as Russell's “On the Nature
of Truth”, is in part a commentary on Russell's
paper.) But then we have another question—why does he never
cite her distinction? Surely his audience, in particular readers
of Mind, members of the Aristotelian Society and members of
the Moral Sciences Club (see below), could be expected to be acquainted
with it. If so, then it would make sense to mention it, if only to show
how his (or Frege's) version of the distinction is markedly
different. Even if there is disagreement with the framework in
which the distinction is grounded, we need an explanation of total
silence. After all, in “On Denoting” Russell cites
approvingly Bradley's account of universal generalizations in
terms of conditionals, even though he has decisively parted ways with
Bradley's logic. So at least in one case he could separate
a valuable idea from the framework in which it was expressed.

One document of interest concerning the question of influence is a
letter to Philip Jourdain, dated September 5, 1909. Jourdain had
sent Russell the draft of a long survey article on Frege's work, in
which he mentions Jones's distinction, in Jones (1890) and
(1982a), between intension and denotation—a distinction endorsed,
as he noted in the published version of the article, by Keynes in the
fourth (and final) edition of his influential text, Studies and
Exercises in Formal Logic (Jourdain, 1911–12, 201–2, footnote
153). Although Jourdain's letter is now lost, it appears he is
querying Russell about the relation between Jones's distinction
and Frege's (and, quite possibly, Russell's related
distinction between meaning and denotation). Here Russell
responds:

It would seem, from what you say in your letter, that Miss
Jones's distinction of signification and denotation must be much
the same as Frege's Sinn and Bedeutung. But of course
some such distinction is a commonplace of logic, and
everything turns on the form given to the distinction. I have
neither Keynes nor Miss Jones here, or I would look up the point.
(Grattan-Guinness 1977, 119)

The note displays a remarkable lack of charity. Russell,
instead of expressing interest in the possibility that Jones
anticipated Frege on sense and reference, dismisses the distinction as
“a commonplace of logic.” Going by what he writes
here, how it is made, and not the distinction itself, is what
is crucial. But until Russell developed the theory of
descriptions, the distinction was made informally, both in his own case
and in the case of Frege (1892). (While Frege 1893, §11,
does present a formal theory of definite descriptions, one which could
conceivably be employed as a formal theory of sense, it is doubtful
that Russell had this version of Frege's theory in mind when
writing the above.) Surely the distinction had been worth making
in the cases of Frege and of his earlier self, even though no
particular form seems to have been given to the distinction in either
case. Russell's dismissal is therefore puzzling.

Moreover, had Russell consulted Keynes' account of
Jones's distinction, he would have encountered an example that is
quite similar to one used by Frege in the opening paragraph of
“On Sense and Reference”:

If out of all triangles we select those which possess the
property of having three equal sides, and if again out of all triangles
we select those which possess the property of having three equal
angles, we shall find that in either case we are left with precisely
the same set of triangles. Thus, each side of our equation
denotes precisely the same class of objects, but the class is
determined or arrived at in two different ways. (Keynes 1906, 190)

Whether or not Keynes and Frege give the same “form” to
the distinction, Keynes's presentation is sufficiently close to
Frege's to suggest that one could hardly be in a position to
dismiss the one, but not the other, as
“commonplace”.[2]

One explanation of Russell's dismissal of Jones's
distinction has to do with his correspondent. Jourdain, a former
student of Russell's, was quite conversant with the developing
mathematical logic (at least to a degree—he was a competent, but
not quite first-rate, practitioner), went on to publish informed survey
articles on (in addition to the piece on Frege already mentioned)
Boole, Jevons, MacColl, and Peano, and had written on Russell's
earlier work on the principles of mathematics. It's
conceivable that Russell resented the fact that Jourdain, expert in
both Oxbridge logic and mathematical logic, took Jones to be touching
on a point that he and Frege had already laid claim to—perhaps
even beating them to a crucial insight. Matters are made worse by
the suggestion that Jones had—however casually and
indirectly—influenced Russell. Any indication either that
he was influenced by Jones, or that she anticipated him in some small
way, would detract from Russell's own contribution. It is
one thing to acknowledge a debt to a Frege or to a Peano. Russell
saw these men not only as intellectual giants, but also as introducing
genuinely revolutionary ideas and techniques into the study of logic
and the foundations of mathematics. Not only was Jones manifestly
not of their caliber, she was also philosophically quite
retrograde. For Russell, mindful both of the figures he was
allying himself with and of the innovation in thought that they were
introducing, acknowledging that Jones had anticipated some of his ideas
may have been repugnant. Small wonder, then, that he kept silent on the
matter in his published work and correspondence. As it turns out,
Jones was quickly to take credit (in print) for first giving
expression to the distinction (see Jones 1910–11), although she
sensibly refrained from suggesting that her work influenced
Russell.

None of this is to deny that there may have been entirely
intellectual reasons for Russell's dismissal. As indicated,
Russell clearly saw Jones as a throwback to an earlier period.
Thus, even if there was some recognition that she had come upon a
distinction quite similar to that between sense and reference or
meaning and denotation, Russell's indifference could quite easily
be attributed to the fact that the insight was grafted onto a system of
logic that he
rejected.[3]

See Waithe and Cicero (1995, 37–43) for an extended discussion
of the relation between Russell and Jones.

On December 2, 1909, Jones delivered a paper to the Cambridge Moral
Sciences Club, titled “Categorical Propositions and the Law of
Identity” (later published, under a different title, as Jones
1910a). Russell responded at a meeting three months later, on
March 10, 1911, delivering “Knowledge by Acquaintance and
Knowledge by Description”. While Russell did not acknowledge
being influenced by Jones in his earlier work, nor did he compare her view to
Frege's, it is significant that he took her work seriously enough
to merit a public response, one that would be recorded in one of his
most influential papers.

The main point of their exchange concerns the following well-known
passage in “On Denoting”:

If a is identical with b, whatever is true of one
is true of the other, and either may be substituted for the other in
any proposition without altering the truth or falsehood of that
proposition. Now George IV wished to know whether Scott was the
author of Waverley; and in fact Scott was the author
of Waverley. Hence, we may substitute Scott for
the author of ‘Waverley’, and thereby prove that
George IV wished to know whether Scott was Scott. Yet an interest in
the law of identity can hardly be attributed to the first gentleman of
Europe. (Russell 1905b, 420)

Of this passage, Jones writes:

When George IV asked whether Scott was the author of
Waverley, what he wanted to know was, whether the intension
(‘meaning’, connotation) of Author of
‘Waverley’ could be assigned to
Scott—i.e.,—whether identity of denotation could
be asserted between Scott and Author of
‘Waverley’. The “first gentleman of
Europe” did not want to know whether Scott was Scott …
.

No doubt, ‘if a is identical [in denotation, that is]
with b,’ whatever is true of the thing denoted by
a is true of the same thing denoted by
b—with the obvious reservation that
a is a does not convey the information that a has the
intension (or connotation) b. (Jones 1910a, 379–80; the
insertion is Jones's)

I quote Russell's response at length:

Miss Jones argues that ‘Scott is the Author of
Waverley’ asserts identity of denotation between
Scott and the author of Waverley. But there is
some difficulty in choosing among alternative meanings of this
contention. In the first place, it should be observed that
the Author of Waverley is not a mere name, like
Scott. Scott is merely a noise, or shape
conventionally used to designate a certain person; it gives no
information about that person, and has nothing that can be called
meaning as opposed to denotation. (I neglect the fact, considered
above, that names, as a rule, really stand for descriptions.) But
the author of Waverley is not merely conventionally a name for
Scott; the element of mere convention belongs here to the separate
words, the and author and of and
Waverley. Given what these words stand for, the
author of Waverley is no longer arbitrary. When it is said
that Scott is the author of Waverley, we are not stating that
these are two names for one man, as we should be if we said
‘Scott is Sir Walter’. A man's name is what he
is called, but however much Scott had been called the author of
Waverley, that would not have made him be the author; it was
necessary for him to actually write Waverley, which was a fact
having nothing to do with names. (Russell 1910–11, 27–28)

This passage expands on a point made in “On Denoting”, where Russell writes:

Now the relation of meaning and denotation is not merely linguistic
through the phrase: there must be a logical relation involved, which we
express by saying that the meaning denotes the denotation. (Russell
1905b, 421)

In his response, Russell explains why it is that the relation
between a name and its referent is “merely linguistic through the
phrase”, whereas the relation between a description and its
denotation must be “logical”. The relation between a name ß
and what it stands for is (merely) linguistic in that it is acceptable
to specify what ß stands for with the phrase ‘the
referent/denotation of ß’. The reason that it is
acceptable is because ß has its reference or denotation
determined conventionally. Thus, since no analysis is possible,
all we can do is state the brute fact captured by the schema
‘ß stands for the referent/denotation of
ß’. In contrast, the relation between a description
and what it denotes is logical—the denotation relation
is constrained by the meanings of the constituents of the description
and their mode of combination. Thus, if ß is a description,
‘ß stands for the referent/denotation of ß’
does not state a brute fact about our use of ß. Rather, it
states a fact that holds in virtue of other facts—facts about the
meanings of ß's constituents and their mode of
combination.

A bit later, he continues:

If we are to say, as Miss Jones does, that ‘Scott is the
author of Waverley’ asserts an identity of denotation,
we must regard the denotation of ‘the author of
Waverley’ as the denotation of what is meant by
‘the author of Waverley’. Let us call the
meaning of ‘the author of Waverley’
M. Thus M is what ‘the author of
Waverley’ means. Then we are to suppose that
‘Scott is the author of Waverley’ means
‘Scott is the denotation of M’. But here we
are explaining our proposition by another of the same form, and thus
have made no progress towards a real explanation. ‘The
denotation of M’, like ‘the author of
Waverley’¸ has both meaning and denotation, on the
theory we are examining. If we call its meaning
M′, our proposition becomes ‘Scott is the
denotation of M′’. But this leads to an endless
regress. Thus the attempt to regard our proposition as asserting
identity of denotation breaks down, and it becomes imperative to find
some other analysis. When this analysis has been completed, we
shall be able to reinterpret the phrase ‘identity of
denotation’, which remains obscure so long as it is taken as
fundamental. (Russell 1910–11, 28–29)

Let's unpack this. Russell is here evaluating a
hypothesis according to which a description such as ‘the author
of Waverley’ is, contrary to his own view, meaningful
in
isolation.[4]
To
assume that this description is meaningful in isolation is to assume
that, for some M, ‘the author of
Waverley’ means M. Let's call this
meaning M*. Since we accept the following:

The denotation of ‘the author of Waverley’ =
the denotation of what is meant by ‘the author of
Waverley’

we also accept

The denotation of ‘the author of Waverley’ =
the denotation of M*

Now the meaning-in-isolation theorist might suggest that our
original sentence, ‘Scott is the author of
Waverley’, means that Scott is the denotation of
M*. But, as Russell observes, all this does is to
replace one description with another. In failing to tell us what
‘the author of Waverley’ means in terms that
don't involve an expression equally in need of analysis, we have
been given no evidence that this, or any, description is meaningful in
isolation.

Jones responds:

Mr. Russell explains my meaning to be that the denotation of The
author of Waverley is the denotation of what is meant by
the author of Waverley. But I do not accept this.
Meaning, intension, of author is authorship;
denotation of author is person of whom authorship is an
attribute. I do not see from the fact of one proposition
being explained by another of the same form … it follows that we
“have made no progress towards a real explanation.”
This would seem to involve that one categorical proposition cannot be
explained by other categorical propositions. (Jones 1910–11,
183–184)

Jones rejects the proposal that what is denoted by the F =
what is denoted by the meaning of ‘the F’.
While her reasoning is obscure, the point seems to be that these
descriptions cannot co-refer, since they involve different
concepts—one, but not the other, involves the concept of
denotation. The point is confused, however; clearly, the
descriptions are co-denoting—relative to the assumption that
‘the meaning of the F’ has a denotation.

Her second point is more intriguing: Jones objects to the regress
argument's conclusion that no real explanation of the
meaning of denoting phrases can be achieved if we explain a
proposition containing such a phrase with another proposition
containing a phrase of the same form. Once again, however, the
point is undeveloped. Nonetheless, it is implied that a
categorical proposition can indeed be explained by another
categorical proposition, so from the fact that p and
q share the same form it does not follow that (e.g.)
q fails to explain p (in the relevant sense of
‘explain’). (Recall that she takes all categorical
propositions to possess the same form.) Echoing Jones's
sentiment, R. M. Sainsbury writes, “it is unclear what sort of
explanation is needed, and why the circularity is vicious. This
objection [i.e., Russell's] must be regarded as therefore
inconclusive” (Sainsbury 1979, 105). (Broad (1912) responds
similarly.) Hylton (1990, 252–53), on the other hand, argues
quite persuasively that there is a vicious regress here
(Hylton's remarks are concerned specifically with the passage in
“On Denoting”, however).

The point is developed further in Jones's reply to Broad
(1912), responding to Jones (1910–11):

If I say that the import of, e.g. Scott is the Author of
Waverley, is to assert identity of denotation with diversity
of intension, I can of course also say that: What is denoted by
‘what is denoted by “Scott”’, is
identical with what is denoted by ‘what is denoted by
“Author of Waverley”’. As Mr. Broad
suggests, the repetition in Subject and Predicate is ineffective,
and

(1)

Scott

(2)

What is denoted by ‘Scott’

(3)

What is denoted by ‘What is denoted by
“Scott”’

have all three the same identical denotation.

(1′)

Scott is the Author of Waverley.

If my analysis (as far as denotation is concerned) is applied to
this, we get:—

(2′)

What is denoted by
‘Scott’ is identical with what is denoted by ‘Author
of Waverley’.

If the same analysis is applied to (2) we have :—

(3′)

What is denoted by
‘What is denoted by “Scott”’ is identical with
what is denoted by ‘what is denoted by “Author of
Waverley”’,

and so on. We have simply a repetition, for each successive more
complicated proposition, of the analysis adopted.

I think that a regress equally “infinite,” equally
inevitable, equally innocuous, equally useless, would emerge in the
case of any propositional analysis treated in the same way…
(Jones 1913, 528)

Jones seems to miss an important point here. The existence of
a sequence such as (1′)–(3′) is predicted on both
analyses—one according to which ‘Author of
Waverley’ (or ‘the author of
Waverley’) has meaning in isolation, and one according
to which it does not. Thus, the inevitability of the sequence is
of no consequence, as it fails to tell against Russell's
theory.

To see this, note that Russell could easily acknowledge that a
sequence of the following form will exist when ‘a’
is either a name or a definite description

a is the
referent of ‘a’

a is the referent of “the referent of
‘a’”

a is the referent of ‘the referent of “the
referent of ‘a’”’

⋮

In the case of names, the first clause provides the ultimate
explanation for the truth of each succeeding clause. This is not
true, however, when ‘a’ is a description.

Consider, for example, the following segment of an infinite
sequence:

(4)

Scott

(5)

the referent of ‘Scott’

(6)

the referent of ‘the referent of
“Scott”’

We can say that:

(4*)

‘Scott’ refers to (4).

(5*)

‘Scott’ refers to (5).

(6*)

‘Scott’ refers to (6).

Notice, however, that each member of the latter sequence
after (4*) holds because (4*) holds. (Unless, of
course, one wants to deny that even ‘Scott’ has meaning in
isolation; but this is obviously not Jones's position.)
That is, ‘Scott’ refers to the referent of
‘Scott’ (i.e., (5)) because ‘Scott’ refers to
Scott (i.e., (4)).

Now consider the following initial segment of an infinite sequence,
(7)–(9), together with the corresponding reference
assignments, (7*)–(9*):

(7)

the author of
Waverly

(8)

the referent of ‘the author of
Waverly’

(9)

the referent of ‘the referent
of “the author of Waverly”’

(7*)

‘the author of
Waverly’ refers to (7)

(8*)

‘the author of
Waverly’ refers to (8)

(9*)

‘the author of
Waverly’ refers to (9)

Here we see a contrast with (4*)–(6*): explaining (8*) by
citing (7*) is unsatisfying, since we have no explanation of
(7*). Moreover, (7*), unlike (4*), does not state a
brute semantic fact—a fact that cannot be further explained in
semantic terms.

This disparity between the two cases may not settle the case in
Russell's favor—perhaps, ‘the author of
Waverly’, like ‘Scott’, is
meaningful in isolation after all, even though its meaning (or
denotation), unlike that of ‘Scott’, can't be
assigned directly (indeed, Richard Montague provided the tools for
constructing precisely such a meaning). Even so, the point is
that the mere existence of a sequence such as (7*) – (9*) does
not settle the case in Jones's favor.

An important related criticism, not acknowledged by Russell in
subsequent writings (it appeared after his response to Jones in
“Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description”)
is a critique of a famous passage in Principia
Mathematica. In arguing that descriptions are incomplete
symbols and have no meaning in isolation, Russell claims that although
‘Scott is the author of Waverley’ expresses an
identity, ‘the author of Waverley’ cannot be a
name. If it were, then it would be a value of c in the
propositional function ‘Scott is c’. But
this would mean that ‘Scott is the author of
Waverley’ expresses what ‘Scott is Scott’
expresses, which is absurd:

The “author of Waverly” cannot mean the same as
“Scott,” or “Scott is the author of Waverley”
would mean the same as “Scott is Scott” which it plainly
does not; nor can the “author of Waverley” mean anything
other than “Scott” or “Scott is the author of
Waverley” would be false. Hence the “author of
Waverley” means nothing. (Whitehead and Russell 1910, 67)

Jones observes:

Granted that Intension and Denotation are
differently defined, this argument seems to depend on a double use of
the word meaning—thus: when it is said that the author of
Waverley cannot mean the same as Scott,
meaning signifies intension or connotation; plainly intension
(or connotation) of the author of Waverley and of
Scott, cannot be the same. But when it is said that
the author of Waverley cannot mean anything other
than Scott, or Scott is the author of Waverley would
be false, “mean anything other than Scott” must be
understood of denotation; if Scott and the author of
Waverley are two distinct persons, clearly Scott is the author
of Waverley must be false. (My identity-in-diversity theory
removes the difficulty at once.) (Jones 1910–11, 175–76)

Jones's point can be summarized as follows. When Russell
argues that ‘author of Waverly’ cannot mean the same as
‘Scott’ because this would imply that ‘Scott is the
author of Waverley’ and ‘Scott is Scott’
express the same proposition, he uses ‘meaning’ in an
intensional sense: “plainly intension (or connotation) of the
author of Waverley and of Scott, cannot be the
same.” But when he argues that ‘the author of
Waverly’ must mean the same thing as
‘Scott’, he uses ‘meaning’ in the denotational
sense. Russell's premises, disambiguated, can be recast as
follows: ‘the author of Waverly’ and
‘Scott’ cannot have the same intension; ‘the author
of Waverly’ and ‘Scott’ must have the same
denotation. From these, it does not follow that ‘the author
of Waverly’ has neither denotation nor
connotation—that it lacks meaning.

Jones seems to be perfectly correct here. The
Principia argument intending to show that descriptions such as
‘the author of Waverly’ have no meaning in isolation
assumes that an expression can only possess one kind of
meaning—and thus that sameness of meaning is either sameness of
intension or sameness of denotation—and Jones is quite right to
challenge this.

Jones was not the only woman contributing to philosophical logic and
related areas at the beginning of the twentieth century:
Peirce's student, Christine Ladd-Franklin (1847-1930) made
significant contributions to logic and psychology (see Russinoff 1999
for Ladd-Franklin's contributions to the algebra of logic), and
the writings of Lady Victoria Welby (1837–1912) on meaning were widely
read. Indeed, Peirce reviewed her What is Meaning?,
together with Russell's Principles of Mathematics, in
The Nation. (Dale 1996 discusses Welby's role in
the development of the theory of meaning.) Later figures include
the philosopher of science, Dorothy Wrinch (1894–1976), a Girton
student who went on to study under Russell, and Susanne Langer
(1895–1985), who wrote a dissertation under Alfred North Whitehead at
Radcliff in 1926. Wrinch, who published papers in Mind
on, among other things, the theory of relativity, later abandoned
philosophy for chemistry, teaching for many years at Smith
College. Langer, who later achieved prominence in the philosophy
of art, published several technical articles on type theory and related
topics early in her career (see, for example, Langer 1926, 1927).
Possibly the most prominent woman analytic philosopher of the first
half of the twentieth century, however, was another Girton student, L.
Susan Stebbing (1885–1943), Professor of Philosophy at Bedford College,
London, and co-founder of the journal Analysis.
Stebbing, through her most successful student, Max Black, is
responsible for one of the largest “families” in Josh
Dever's Philosophy Family Tree (Dever 2006—see the Other
Internet Resources).

Waithe (1995) is an important resource for research into these
women, as well as numerous minor figures. On the larger question
of the erasure of women from the history of philosophy, from antiquity
to the French Revolution, Eileen O'Neill's essay,
“Disappearing Ink” (O'Neill 1998), remains
indispensable.

1895–96, “Symposium:
Are Character and Circumstances Co-Ordinate Factors in Human Life, or
Is Either Subordinate to the Other?” (with B. Bosanquet, William
L. Gildea and Alexander F. Shand), Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, 3: 112–122

1899, “Character and
Circumstance,” International Journal of Ethics, 9:
504–511.

Hicks, L.E., 1913,
“Identity as a Principle of Stable Values and as a Principle of
Difference,” Philosophical Review, 22: 375–394.

Jourdain, P. E. B., 1911–12,
“The Development of the Theories of Mathematical Logic and the
Principles of Mathematics,” The Quarterly Journal of Pure and
Applied Mathematics, 43: 219–314; page reference is to the reprint
in Frege 1980.

I would like to thank to Kenneth Blackwell, Rosalind Carey, Juliet
Floyd, Nicholas Griffin, Kevin Klement and Consuelo Preti for their
comments on an earlier draft of this entry. I would also like to
acknowledge my debt to the pioneering work of Mary Ellen Waithe and
Samantha Cicero, whose comprehensive and informed chapter on E. E.
Constance Jones in Waithe (1995) first brought Jones to my
attention.

The SEP would like to congratulate the National Endowment for the Humanities on its 50th anniversary and express our indebtedness for the five generous grants it awarded our project from 1997 to 2007.
Readers who have benefited from the SEP are encouraged to examine the NEH’s anniversary page and, if inspired to do so, send a testimonial to neh50@neh.gov.